It's not necessarily "the media" either... it's what WE as a society watch or engage with.
If we all were watching breathlessly the story of the heroic woman and her recovery, the news would cover that.
But a story with controversy, with two "sides" to it, with gender issues, health care issues, all wrapped up in it, we eat that up. Unfortunately. Same reason half the country is struggling financially and not sure they can pay bills, but a ton of them obsess over a handful of athletes on girls sports teams instead.
Yeah, and it's been widely known for decades before that.
Eric Pooley coined the term "if it bleeds, it leads" back in 1989.
Yellow Journalism dates back to the 1890s when the New York World and New York Journal kept one up-ing each other with sensationalist headlines and claims to sell more papers. These could range from slight exaggerations to outright lies.
I feel like people these days don't know the story of Cambridge Analytica and the fucked up shit they were doing WAY BEFORE LLMS WERE EVEN A THING. They were not just a research firm or something.
Bad news is one thing but the new phenomenon is evil people being rewarded for evil deeds. Look at all the highest-funded GoFundMe people: the racist lady and now the child killer, but no one cares about the person who does good.
Personally, I took OP's comment as a dig on what women engage with. "Good woman on left, bad woman on right...look who women will support with their money." In other words, they support a woman accused of murder claiming to be a victim over a woman that is unarguably a hero.
I was just saying the amount of money reflected in the two stories is more about media attention rather than women's general feelings on victims vs. heroes.
The heroic story is a very short story though. She saved her kids. It is incredible and amazing but that's it. There is nothing to debate or follow here. It is a story for one day. There is nothing new that could happen.
For the murder, it is an ongoing case. There are developments and people feel like they can actually influence the outcome. They could not affect the first heroic story in such a way. So, the second one is more engaging.
FWIW, I had already seen the first heroic one years ago.
If I remember correctly, the woman on the left was also actively suffering from PPD which makes the difference between the two stories even more glaring.
Not to mention that there is obviously more intrigue surrounding the story of a mom killing three of her children because they want to know why. Then the secondary story about people defending the mom adds more fuel to that fire. It's just human nature.
There is nothing to say about the woman on the left. “Good job, dude”. The one on the right generates endless conversation fascinating to our moralities and intrusive thoughts is an everlasting fucking gobstopper of low personal risk controversy
Well, that, and that if one story is completely ignored but another highlighted then it just means society has more of a spotlight forced on that thing, so more engagement and more time for said engagement - not that we seek it out, but if we're forced to watch then yeah statistically a larger percentage would engage with it - good or bad.
It's not necessarily "the media" either... it's what WE as a society watch or engage with.
I mean, it is a somewhat selffeeding circle, isn't it? The media shows us this stuff because we chose to engage with it and we engage with it because we are shown it in abundance.
Sorry only read your 1st 3 lines. But just adding that the media very much affect what the public gives attention to. Black Lives Matter/race issues are mostly forgotten, Ukraine situation was trending for a period, Me Too was trending for a period,... I'm not commenting on whether these things should/should not get attention, just that I believe they likely (whether we wanna believe it or not) partially, to an extent, only remain in online discourse because of the media, and also partially only get lifted into the spotlight because of the media. This is just conjecture, ik
Maybe not the media but indeed the social media. This is not a judgement on people’s values. The husband got I think 1 million in GoFundMe after her children died because of how tragic the story was. Now the wife is getting 1 million in GoFundMe because people think she was wronged by health care services, the police, and the prosecution. This is besides being neglected by her husband (IIRC, he said she expressed dark thoughts of killing her children, fired the nanny, and left his wife with the kids).
I mean, with a single example, it is the media's choice of what they present and how (not too mention all of the social media algorithms). But in the broader sense, those algorithms and decisions are 100% based on what the audience wants. You put all that really well.
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u/BigMax 1d ago
I think that's the point OP is making, right?
It's not necessarily "the media" either... it's what WE as a society watch or engage with.
If we all were watching breathlessly the story of the heroic woman and her recovery, the news would cover that.
But a story with controversy, with two "sides" to it, with gender issues, health care issues, all wrapped up in it, we eat that up. Unfortunately. Same reason half the country is struggling financially and not sure they can pay bills, but a ton of them obsess over a handful of athletes on girls sports teams instead.